Offer Me Protection
by Nina of the Galaxy
Summary: Laurel and Oliver have a moment the night after Sara dies.


Title: Offer Me Protection  
Words: 2564  
Genre: Tragedy  
Pairing: Laurel/Oliver  
Status: Done.

Summary: _Laurel and Oliver have a moment the night after Sara dies. _

* * *

Laurel poured herself a shot and downed it as Oliver came in. "I know she's gone, but should you be drinking?" He asked.

"You shouldn't be breaking in. We just got the task force off of you." She said as she looked at the bottle and warred with herself about how it felt. It felt so good just to feel a little numb.

He shook his head and tried to take the bottle away. She grabbed it before he could take it fully away. "The window was open. You wanted me to come. And how many days did you just flush down?" He asked her.

She looked at him and laughed, laughed so as not to cry. "You don't get to tell me how to deal with loss." She told him. "Besides, it's only one. I'm not going back to it. Well, maybe not just one," She said as she looked at the bottle.

He took it away from her. "No, this isn't how you deal. She wouldn't want you to deal like this." He said as he put the lid on the bottle.

She slammed her fist on the table. "No," She said. "You don't get to tell me how to deal with this. You just leave. You always leave. I have to live it. I have to tell everyone. I have to tell them alone. I have to go alone, to tell my mother and my father that she's dead. That she came back to them, that she was alive and beautiful and doing well and now, now she's dead…" She said as she trailed off into tears. She didn't look at him, she pounded her fists on the table and cried.

He shook his head. "Yes, she's dead. But you're going to be okay." He told her, because she could be. She could be okay if she didn't let all of this get to her.

"Why does everyone leave?" She screamed as she cleared the counter of all of its contents, including papers and plastic jars of doo dads that she had she leaned over it. "Why do they always leave me alone?" She asked, overcome and exhausted.

He took her hands away from the table and made her look into his eyes. "You do not have to tell them alone," He said as he kissed her knuckles and sighed. "You do not have to go through this loss alone, okay? I'm sorry I left you with Tommy, but now, I swear to you, I'm going to stay with you. I'm not going anywhere. You're gonna sick of me before your done grieving."

Laurel looked at him and smiled a little sadly. "You sure? Because if your gonna bail, just do it now, while I'm down so we can just get this over with because I can't take anymore crying then I'm already gonna do."

He chuckled a little. "No, I'm not going anywhere," He said as he pushed some of her hair behind her ear. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily," Oliver smiled and put his hands out to give her the option to hug him.

She laid her limp body onto his chest and he closed around her. They still had to go to her parents and tell them about the horrific thing that happened. He didn't know how it happened or who ordered it but that was not important. She was hurting and he wanted to ease that burden.

She didn't say anything for a long time and they sat there on her couch and he ran his fingers through her hair. It wasn't until she spoke up that the silence was broken. "I have to go after them." She said, not looking at him, but he knew that she was talking to him.

"Are you sure?" He asked, quietly. What she was asking, it wasn't about the legal stuff. That much was clear. There was no one there except Laurel and she was the district attorney. There would be a small conflict of interest if they prosecuted Sara's killer here. But she wasn't talking about that. "That's not your path. You're good," He whispered into her hair.

She shook her head. "Don't tell me that. I'm not good. Everyone leaves." She said as she stood up. "I'm going after them. I'm asking you to help me, but if you don't want to, fine. I'll avenge her on my own." She shrugged. She was serious about this.

"Laurel, once you go there. You can never go back. Taking lives. It's not like justice. You have to live with the fact that you've snuffed out all of the possibilities of that person. They have families too." He told her as he folded his hands together.

She laughed. "It's a good thing I've already taken a life then isn't it?" She asked him.

He looked confused and then he remembered back to when they were looking for Blood and they were hoodwinked by a patsy in his mask. She shot the guy for him. She took that life. He grabbed her hands in his and his eyes watered. "I'm sorry for putting you in that position, but what you're talking about, it can rot you to the core. That's a darkness you can never come back from."

Her eyes softened to him. "Do you believe in my light?" She asked him as she cupped his cheek.

"Yeah," He nodded. She was so good. She did this for the justice. She did it for the people who were in the right. She did it for the people who deserved her. "I need you, Laurel. I need you to be good. I stood in the darkness for so long. And I need you to guide me back. I need your light. I believe in it." He told her as he kissed her fingers.

She cried a little bit. "Then I also need you to believe in my darkness. I need you to be able to let me do this. I need you to not get in the way. I need to do this for my sister. You owe me that." She said.

He chuckled. "You're really going to use the boat trip against me right now?" He asked.

"If I have to," She shrugged as she put his hand on her chest over her heart where it was beating sadly. "She deserves a proper send off. She deserves justice. And I need you to be there for me. I need you to believe in me. But I also need you to bring me back from the edge if I can't stop." She told him.

He understood her want. She wanted a little more control over the whole thing that she was given by Sara being brutally murdered in front of her. "I can do that." He whispered as she took her hand and squeezed it. "She'd be proud of you, you know?" He told her. "She really would. Hell, she'd have probably done the same thing. Only without consulting me if the roles were reversed." He chuckled a little.

Laurel shrugged. "You only got consulted because you were the one here to console me." She put her head on his shoulder. "I have to tell them in the morning." She said, thinking through her next day.

Oliver pat her hair down. "We need to get your mom back here. But we're gonna do this together." He told her. "But you need some sleep before you do that." He said as stood up from the couch.

"Is that your way of telling me I look like shit right now?" She asked him.

He shook his head. "You look beautiful but sleep will help," He said as he took her hands and dragged her to her bedroom. She sat on the bed and he took out some nightclothes from her drawers and she dropped her skirt right there and he looked away.

It was her turn to shake her head. "You've seen it all before. No need to look away," She told him.

He looked back over and sighed. She was right. He sat by her and saw some new scars, particularly a big one across her stomach. "What happened?" He asked as he touched it.

She shrugged. "I went looking for trouble in the five months you were gone. I wanted to die. I had nothing to live for. And that was a mob boss. Cops got to him before he got away and got to me before I bled out." She said, simply. Like it didn't matter that she almost died without him being there.

He cradled her head on his chest. "You should have told me. We could have gotten you some help." He told her. The thought of her dying when he wasn't in the city, that was unfathomable. He couldn't take it. John and Felicity had come and gotten him at the right time. She seemed to be in a better place when he came back, but clearly wasn't. At least she had been over that part.

"I wanted to be strong," She cried into his chest.

He shook his head and sniffled. "You don't have to be strong for everyone. Not like that. You're the strongest person I know. And I just I need you to not go after mob bosses without proper training okay? God, I don't know what I would have done if I lost you." He told her.

"You're not gonna lose me. As long as I don't lose you," She said softly.

He looked at her and smiled as he nodded. That was the pact. They didn't lose each other. "You're gonna have me, always and forever." He told her. "That's what Sara said when she came back from the dead for me. That it was Oliver and Laurel, always and forever."

"She wasn't wrong," Laurel smiled. "It's gonna be you and me, always and forever. Too much we've been through to quit on each other." She told him.

He nodded. "We should get you some sleep though. That's what we came in here for in the first place," He laughed. She slid into bed and he turned off the light and stood in the doorway. "You're gonna be better than you think."

She looked at him in the dark and smiled. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was gonna do better than she thought. "Can you stay with me, tonight?" She asked him. For one minute, she just wanted to believe that it could be alright. That she would wake up five years ago when she still had a sister and a family that was together, and her boyfriend hadn't been lost at sea, and her best friend wasn't dead.

He crawled into bed next to her and felt her skin underneath his. "Just sleep, okay?" He asked. She nodded and he snuggled around her and cocooned her in his warmth. He had to admit it felt pretty good not worrying about everything for a minute too.

The news played lightly in the background for what seemed like hours before her breath evened out, fully asleep. And when she was asleep, she shivered, not because she was cold and he held her tight and promised to never let go of her like that. When the shivers stopped, he looked down and smiled at the peace on her face. What he wouldn't give for that to be every minute of her day.

He fell asleep later, thinking of the girls in his life and how inevitably they always lead him back to her, to Laurel. Laurel had to like them. They claimed he loved Laurel more than them. She was always the deciding factor in how his relationships turned out. And maybe there was something to that, but he couldn't pursue her now. She had to deal on her own. Alone. But not lonely. He could help with that.

"That's such a boyfriend thing to do," She murmured.

He laughed. "I thought you were asleep." He told her.

She shrugged. "Something didn't feel right. And then I saw you staring. Which by the way is totally a boyfriend thing to do." She told him once again.

"Sorry," He chuckled. "Is there anything unboyfriendy that I can do for you?" He asked.

She sighed and rolled over to look at the clock. Three. She still had loads of time before she had to be into work. "Make coffee?" She asked him.

He nodded and got up. And she sat up and picked her laptop up off the ground and turned on the tv. She set about to work. And you'd almost think that it didn't hurt her. That she'd forgotten how hurt she was last night. Except, she wasn't leaving anything to chance. She wanted everything occupied. "It's okay to grieve." Oliver promised.

"This is how I work through it," She told him with a sad smile. "Justice for others." She promised him.

He didn't understand, but he tried to the best he could. She didn't want to talk about it and so he let her not talk about it. "How are you gonna tell your mom?" He asked.

"I'll call her before I tell dad." She told him as she put a case folder on the nightstand and took her cup of coffee which he passed to her. "You can still be there right?" She asked as she suddenly looked up.

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm gonna be there, anyway you need me." He told her. "I can get Digg and Felicity to start looking for the guy who did this," He told her. "If that would help."

She shook her head. "I think I wanna do that myself. I want to look into the eyes of this guy and see the face of who stole my sister from me," She growled a little into her coffee.

He sipped from his. "That's more than just justice. That's revenge. Let me help you get justice." He told her.

"Justice and revenge don't have to be mutually exclusive." She told him. "this man killed my sister. For no reason."

He nodded. "I get it, I do. But you, for you, Revenge and justice should be two very different things. Justice is who you are. It's in your bones. And if you let revenge corrupt that, it changes you. It doesn't make you question firing the shot that could save a life. You save lives. You do a hell of a lot better job than I do at that. And you question my taking lives unless it is absolutely necessary. I need that argument. I need that questioning. I need that light." He told her.

She looked over the top of her glasses and smiled. "You're pretty good at making speeches too." She said.

He laughed and looked down at her bedspread. "Guess so." He said.

"Know so," She grinned.

He looked her, dead in the eye, "Always and forever?" He asked.

She didn't flinch under his stare. "Always and forever," She replied. And as they looked away, he looked to his coffee and she looked to her computer and typed a little more fervently than usual. "You should have Digg and Felicity help. It'd be good. Not just me and you. But everyone." She said, without looking up.

"I'll get right on that."


End file.
